Sunday afternoon at the NGV

We leave for England tomorrow night! Eek! I'm so excited, but also a bit more anxious than normal... travel has changed a lot since Covid and I'm constantly checking to see if we have done everything we need to do. To be honest, it's actually a lot easier now than six months ago. We don't have to do any PCR tests, and I have an international vaccination certificate, which is only needed to leave Australia. We have to fill in a health declaration to enter Spain as the Australian certificates are not valid in the EU yet, but we don't need anything to transit through Singapore or enter the UK. We are all (as of this moment) healthy... the kids don't even have runny noses, a miracle for young kids in the winter. But still, there is this lingering (and probably irrational) fear that things will change last minute and something will stop us from getting on that flight. Even though I still have a few work related jobs to finish up before we leave, I'm in a state of willing the next 35 hours or so to pass, until our plane takes off from Tullamarine Airport. 

In the meantime, here is a post I started months ago, in March, about a particularly lovely day with the kids. I've now managed to finish it (due to the daily writing habit I mentioned in my last post) so this is a bit of a throwback to a day I remember with fondness. 

One Sunday in March I had the kids on my own and was feeling adventurous, so I decided to take them into the city. It feels like we haven't done a lot of exploring in the city since we returned to Melbourne at the start of 2021, mainly due to Covid. Lockdowns prevented us from doing a lot last year, and then even outside of lockdown periods things like density restrictions meant we had to book in advance; there was little opportunity for spontaneous visits to museums and galleries. Finally though we are living a bit more of a normal existence, and you can just turn up to bigger attractions without booking. 

I'd been wanting to visit the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) all summer. There was a pink pool installation in the gardens that I knew would be a hit with the kids. So off the three of us went, on the tram, to the city. 

The kids get so excited when we say we are in "the city". We only live about 8km from the Melbourne CBD (central business district), so we are hardly in suburbia, but there is something about all the tall buildings that gets them really excited.

That weekend we happened to be koala sitting. Ollie's daycare takes turn giving "Cassidy" to each child to take care of on the weekends. I know it looks like I planned this cultural outing to coincide with Cassidy's visit - we are required to write and add photos to Cassidy's journal on the weekend we are hosting her - and I'll admit, I did I feel a bit "look at what a wonderful parent I am" when I was pasting photos of the weekend into the journal on Sunday night. But in all honesty I love the NGV and had been wanting to visit, even if I was not sure that the kids would be amused once we'd splashed in the pink pool for a bit. 

To my surprise, and delight, we spent nearly four hours at the NGV that afternoon, and I needn't have worried that the kids would be bored. Even before we set foot inside the actually gallery Ollie was entranced by the fountains outside.

The front entrance walls to the NGV are actually waterwalls: glass that has water running down it constantly. From the outside you can touch the water. The kids loved doing this over and over. 

Once inside the kids were mesmerised from almost the moment we arrived. In the main hall the floor had been painted black with white spots and stars, a giant monochromatic installation, reflected in a giant mirror on the ceiling. We spent some time just looking up at an over our heads at ourselves in the mirror above. 

It was a warm day so we headed straight outside to the pink pool. The pool is part of an installation called Pond(er) and here is the description from the NGV website:

Designed by a Melbourne-based team comprising architecture firm Taylor Knights in collaboration with artist James Carey, the installation, entitled pond[er], offers a space for visitors to cool off during the summer months and reflect on their relationship with the environment­.

Referencing Sir Roy Grounds’s open-air courtyards in the original design of NGV International, this architecture and landscape installation comprises two key design elements: a body of indigenous plants and a body of water. The body of water is coloured pink, making direct reference to the many inland salt lakes in Victoria and highlighting the scarcity, importance and political implications of water as a natural resource.

As expected Ella loved wading through what looked like pink water. Ollie, not so much. We mostly watched Ella together from the side of the pool. 

Once we convinced Ella to get out of the pool we explored the rest of the gardens. There was a climbing structure that the kids (and Cassidy) had fun climbing on for a while. 

There are a few other sculptures in the gardens which kids are free to climb on. A nice feature as usually you have to be constantly watching your kids around art, telling them not to climb on it, or touch it. I like the interactivity of the NGV gardens. 

One of the major exhibitions that was on at the NGV was the Bark Ladies exhibition. It features artwork by indigenous women from Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. The work is done by the Yolŋu women on large sheets of bark (hence the name of the exhibition). There was a children’s area linked to the exhibition, with lots of activities for the kids to do. They spent ages exploring this area, including learning to count to five in the Yolŋu language, watching a video of how the Bark Ladies make their art, and creating a piece of art both on paper and digitally.

I eventually dragged the kids out of the children's area and tried taking them to the “real” exhibition. They lasted about 15 minutes before getting a bit silly. So we didn’t stay too long as I was conscious of ruining the experience of people trying to enjoy their civilised afternoon at an art gallery!

When we went to leave we realised I had dropped artwork Ella had made… so off we went, back to the children's area so she could redo it. You would think they’d be bored but we spent another whole half hour here. Ollie didn't want to do the art again, so he used the time to first run around this area in circles, and then have a little rest.

I finally convinced the kids to leave with the promise of ice cream. We traipsed across the Yarra River to Pidapipo for some tasty gelato before catching a tram home. 

All in all it was a pretty successful outing. There is a major Picasso exhibition at the NGV running from now until October so I hope to take the kids once we are back from our holiday.